Spending three hours preparing one 45-minute lesson is the fastest path to burnout. Below are the sources experienced online teachers reach for first — organised by what you're actually trying to do.
On this page
Worksheets and printables
Useful for controlled practice, homework, and structuring 1-on-1 lessons. Quality varies wildly — stick to a few good sources rather than searching ad-hoc each time.
- iSL Collective — biggest free worksheet bank. Filter by level and topic. Quality variable.
- British Council "LearnEnglish" — clean, level-tagged grammar and vocab worksheets, all free.
- Teach-This.com — speaking activities and games, well-structured PDFs.
- Teachers Pay Teachers — paid marketplace, $2–10 per resource. Often higher quality than free options for kids' material.
Flashcards and visuals
- Quizlet — make a deck once, reuse across all students at that level. Free tier is enough for most teachers.
- Wordwall — turn a word list into 18 interactive activity formats in one click. Worth the £30/year for active teachers.
- Pixabay / Unsplash — free, licence-friendly stock images for picture prompts and vocabulary work.
- Canva — make your own custom flashcards, slide decks and visual aids. Free tier is fine.
Video and listening
- YouTube channels: Easy English, BBC Learning English, VOA Learning English (for graded listening). Use a video downloader / playlist mode to avoid ads during lessons.
- TED-Ed — 5-minute animations with built-in questions. Great for B1+ adults.
- TED Talks — full transcripts available; pick 3-minute segments rather than full talks.
- Lyrics Training — fill-in-the-blank from real music videos. Strong engagement boost for teens.
- Movie clips (under fair use): ~2 minutes maximum, always with a task before/during/after — never as a passive watch.
Authentic content
Authentic = made for native speakers, not learners. Powerful for B1+ because students hear real-world language, not textbook scripts.
- Breaking News English — same article rewritten at 7 levels. A reliable workhorse.
- News in Levels — three difficulty levels per news story, audio included.
- Newsela (free for individual teachers) — Lexile-leveled news articles, US focus.
- Reddit threads — for advanced learners: r/AskReddit or niche subs in their professional field. Strip vulgar content first.
- Podcasts: The Daily, Stuff You Should Know, BBC Global News (with transcripts where possible).
Graded readers
Extensive reading is the single most under-used technique in online ESL. Recommending one reader per month builds vocabulary faster than any classroom activity.
- Cambridge English Readers / Penguin Readers — physical or digital, levelled stories.
- Project Gutenberg — free out-of-copyright books. Good for advanced students.
- The Fable Cottage — free illustrated stories for kids, with audio.
- Storynory — free audio stories for children with text follow-along.
Interactive activities
- Kahoot! / Quizizz — game-show style quizzes for review. Works well 1-on-1 too.
- Padlet — collaborative virtual boards. Good for writing tasks across multiple students.
- Mentimeter — instant polls and word clouds during lessons.
- Google Slides / Jamboard — make drag-and-drop activities with movable elements.
- Genially — interactive presentations with quizzes baked in. Free tier is generous.
AI-generated materials
Used carefully, AI cuts prep time by 60–80%. Used lazily, it produces generic worksheets students can tell are AI-generated.
- ChatGPT / Claude — generate gap-fills, reading texts at specified CEFR levels, role-play scripts and personalised vocabulary lists. Always proofread for unnatural collocations.
- Twee, Eduaide.AI, MagicSchool — purpose-built ESL prompts that save you from re-typing the same instructions.
- ElevenLabs / Murf — generate listening audio in different accents for pronunciation work (use sparingly — real human accents are better when possible).
The AI line
Tell students when material is AI-generated, and never use AI for cultural content (idioms, jokes, anything that needs real social knowledge). Models hallucinate frequencies and "natural" usage in subtle ways non-natives won't catch.
A no-prep weekly workflow
- Sunday (30 min): Pick one theme per student for the week. Pull a Breaking News English article at their level for each.
- Same Sunday (15 min): Drop the article into your AI tool with the prompt: "Generate 6 comprehension questions, a vocabulary list of 8 items, and 2 discussion questions for a [B1] student."
- Before each lesson (5 min): Open the article in screen-share, decide which 2 activities you'll use, mentally check anticipated problems.
- After each lesson (3 min): Note errors and vocabulary gaps in a per-student doc. This becomes next week's warm-up.
Total prep time per student per week: about 15 minutes, all in. The first month is heavier as you build templates; after that it stays light.
Materials by student type
The same source library serves different students very differently. A quick map:
Absolute beginners (A1)
- Primary: Pixabay images, Quizlet flashcards, simple drag-and-drop slides.
- Avoid: Authentic content, complex worksheets, anything with idioms.
- Workflow: Pre-make 4–6 slide decks per topic, reuse them across students.
Pre-intermediate to intermediate (A2–B1)
- Primary: News in Levels articles, Wordwall games, structured worksheets from British Council.
- Add: Short video clips with comprehension tasks (TED-Ed under 5 minutes).
- Workflow: One news article per week becomes the spine of 2–3 lessons.
Upper-intermediate (B2)
- Primary: Breaking News English at level 4, TED Talks (3-minute segments), business articles from BBC or Reuters.
- Add: Function-based AI-generated role-plays.
- Workflow: Let the student pick topics from a curated list of 10–15 options.
Advanced (C1+)
- Primary: Real authentic content — articles, podcasts, opinion pieces — that you'd read or listen to yourself.
- Add: Their own work for editing — emails, presentations, writing samples.
- Workflow: The student suggests the topic; you bring the framework.
Young learners (5–10)
- Primary: Wordwall games, ESL flashcards from iSL Collective, songs from YouTube.
- Avoid: Long reading passages, abstract topics, anything that requires sustained attention over 4 minutes.
- Workflow: 8–10 short activities per 30-min lesson. Reuse activity types weekly — kids like predictability.
Teens (11–17)
- Primary: Pop culture references they actually consume (YouTubers, gaming, music), Lyrics Training, age-appropriate authentic content.
- Avoid: Childish-feeling activities, generic textbook topics ("my family"), being patronising.
- Workflow: Ask them what they're into. Build lessons from their answers.
Copyright and licensing — what you can and can't use
The short version: a lot of teachers operate in a grey area. Where it gets you in trouble is when you start selling courses or publishing materials publicly.
- Stock image sites with clear licences (Pixabay, Unsplash, Pexels): Generally free for commercial and educational use. Read the licence; some require attribution.
- YouTube videos: Showing during a private lesson is generally tolerated; downloading and redistributing is not. Embedding in private materials is a grey area.
- News articles: Sharing during a lesson is generally fine under fair use / fair dealing. Republishing in your own materials or paid course is not.
- Textbook scans: Strictly speaking, not OK without licence. Schools and platforms with licences (Lingoda, language schools) have already paid for this; freelance teachers have not.
- AI-generated material: Currently unclear legal status. Treat as your own work, but be aware that copyright on pure AI output is contested in many jurisdictions.
Where copyright matters most
If you publish materials publicly (a paid course, a YouTube channel, a Teachers Pay Teachers listing), you need clear rights to everything in those materials. Stock libraries and original content only. For private 1-on-1 lessons, enforcement is essentially zero — but it's still worth knowing the lines.
Building a personal materials library
The teachers we know who feel calmest about materials have built a personal library over time. Structure:
- Google Drive folder per topic: Family, work, travel, food, etc. Save everything you make or find under the right folder. After a year, you'll have lessons ready in 30 seconds.
- Per-level Quizlet decks: A1 vocab, A2 vocab, B1 phrasal verbs, etc. Update once a month with new items from your lessons.
- Slide deck templates: 5–6 reusable Google Slides templates (warm-up template, vocab introduction, drill template, role-play template). Drop your topic in; lesson is half-done.
- Personal "go-to" list: 10–15 articles, 5–10 video clips, 20–30 conversation prompts you've personally found work well. Bookmark folder, refresh quarterly.
FAQs about materials
Do I need a paid Wordwall subscription?
For active teachers running ~10+ lessons/week, yes — the £30/year unlocks unlimited activities, which pays for itself in saved prep time. For occasional teachers, the free tier is enough.
What about textbooks?
For 1-on-1 online teaching, most teachers don't use textbooks. Authentic content + tailored worksheets work better. If you teach a recurring structured course (IELTS prep, business English program), a textbook can give useful spine — Cambridge "English in Mind" series and "Market Leader" are widely used.
Can I use AI to generate materials I sell?
Technically yes, legally contested. If you're selling materials, get the AI-generated draft, then substantially rewrite and add original examples. Pure AI-output products are increasingly flagged on platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers, and copyright protection for them is unclear.
What's the single best free resource?
Breaking News English. Same article at 7 levels, with comprehension questions and discussion prompts already prepared. Saves hours per week.